trouble compiling on Mac

[Thomas L. Scofield]

Hello.

I am a would-be contributor trying to get up and going.  I have had running on an Intel Mac for some time.  Most recently I've been running ver. 3.0.0, with the operating system being OS 10.4.11.  I'm quite sure that, since having an Intel Mac, I've only obtained Octave in a universal binary form (.dmg file from SourceForge).

This all began when I wanted to get Yaog.  When running the configure script, I got the error message

   configure: error: Octave-config or mkoctfile not found! Check your octave installation!

I thought that perhaps mkoctfile could not be found because I had not compiled from source and, even if that is not the issue, release 3.0.1 is out, so probably I should be working with the most recent stuff anyway, right?  Moreover, I got interested originally seeing a need for more image functionality.  I have not kept up on the discussion surrounding imread/imwrite (time available for getting going on this had to wait until May), but what I gathered early on was that external libraries were generally thought the way to go on this.  So it seems to me I should be writing/modifying Octave code rather than just .m files.  Anyway, whether I am correct about all this or not, I decided to compile v. 3.0.1 from source, and that is where my immediate difficulties lie.

I have some experience compiling from source, but mostly in linux, though even there I have stuck to debian-based distributions and used the apt package-managing system whenever possible.  On my Mac, I have generally stuck to using fink (or apt-get) or macports.

On my first attempt to run the Octave 3.0.1 configure script, I got the message

configure: WARNING: I need GNU Readline 4.2 or later

configure: error: this is fatal unless you specify --disable-readline

So, I used apt-get to download and install readline v. 4.3.  However, subsequent runs of "configure" brought the same warning message.  I next removed the readline package, and downloaded the source tarball for readline v. 5.2, thinking perhaps that if the readline libraries were placed in a different (more standard) location, the configure script could find what it needed.  Though the readline installation (from source) went smoothly, it seemed not to have any effect on the results of "./configure" for Octave.  So, I next ran "./configure --disable-readline".  While I do not think I would have been happy with the resulting program (lack of editing and history) even if that had fixed the only problem, I received many new warnings

configure: WARNING: command editing and history features require GNU Readline

configure: WARNING: UMFPACK not found.  This will result in some lack of functionality for sparse matrices.

configure: WARNING: COLAMD not found. This will result in some lack of functionality for sparse matrices.

configure: WARNING: CCOLAMD not found. This will result in some lack of functionality for sparse matrices.

configure: WARNING: CHOLMOD not found. This will result in some lack of functionality for sparse matrices.

configure: WARNING: CXSparse not found. This will result in some lack of functionality for sparse matrices.

configure: WARNING: FFTW library not found.  Octave will use the (slower) FFTPACK library instead.

configure: WARNING: GLPK library not found.  The glpk function for solving linear programs will be disabled.

configure: WARNING: HDF5 library not found.  Octave will not be able to save or load HDF5 data files.

configure: WARNING: PCRE library not found.  This will result in some loss of functionality for the regular _expression_ matching functions.

configure: WARNING: Qhull library not found --- This will result in loss of functionality of some geometry functions.

So where does one get all of these things if they are not provided with Octave?  Has anyone had similar issues installing on a Mac, or know an appropriate workaround?

Thomas L. Scofield

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Assistant Professor

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Calvin College

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